Tags: meet up

Today marked the 4th Arizona Travel Tweetup. All told seven of us made our way to Boulders on Broadway for a great mixture of travel conversation, beer, food, and travel-tech talk. It was absolutely fantastic seeing familiar faces and putting new faces to twitter handles.

Everyone had lots of great stories and a wealth of fantastic advice, new resources and insights.

The time has come for the 4th Arizona Travel Blogger Meet (and tweet!) up. Bring your stories, pictures and self for an hour or two of travel talk, stories and bonding with other members of Arizona’s local travel community.

The goal is simple! Get to know each other while developing a more aware/active travel community in Arizona. We’ve got a ton of talent/experience in Arizona and it’s about time we started helping each other!

The meet-up will be Saturday March 5th at 2:30PM. We’ll be meeting at Boulders on Broadway which is located just west of Mill Avenue off of Broadway Road in Tempe. All you need to bring is yourself.

If you’ll be attending, please feel free to post a quick introduction, including your twitter info/website/blog in a response to this post.

Date: Saturday, March 5th 2:30-? PM.

Location: Boulders on Broadway which is located on the North East Corner of Broadway and Roosevelt Street in Tempe. View it on Google here. The address is 530 W Broadway Road, Tempe, AZ.

Coordination: My (Alex) phone number is 480.313.2441 if you want to confirm anything or are having issues finding the meet up shoot me a text/call. I won’t be able to check twitter during the event, so make sure to contact me directly.

Spread the Word: So, here’s the challenge. Let’s make sure we don’t miss anyone. Are you aware of travel tweeps, bloggers or industry personalities that might like to join? Make sure to either send them to this post, or get me their e-mail and I’ll reach out to them.

AZ COMMUNITY – On twitter? See the list I’ve assembled of AZ based travel twitter users here.

Any questions? Post them in a comment – or feel free to e-mail me directly via alex ~at~ virtualwayfarer.com.

October, March and August’s meetups were an absolute blast and I’m really excited/looking forward to round two! Hope to see you all there.

We just wrapped up the 2nd Arizona Travel Tweetup and I’m thrilled to say it was an absolute blast. We added three new faces to the group and spent a couple hours exchanging travel stories, wisdom, and doing more than a little brainstorming. You can see the original event announcement here.

For those looking to connect with fellow Arizona based travel people please make sure to look over my AZ Travel list on twitter (if you’re not on it post here or shoot me a tweet).

What We Talked About

I was really excited by how much ground we covered over a relatively short period. For those of you who were not able to join us – here’s a taste of what you missed:

Travel stories and photos – No surprise here right? We had some great ones from an amazing long duration sailing trip, to stories about culture shock in Africa, crying babies, and the woes of traveling with young children. @patriciaelenie brought several stunning photos from her recent SEA Semester program where she sailed for several months around the Caribbean while @BikeLady brought several copies of her recently released Backroads and Byways of Arizona guide.

Twitter – It’s not really a tweetup if you don’t talk about twitter and we did! From general discussions about social media, to more specific discussions about how we use and rely on twitter as a tool we had what i found to be a very informative discussion.

One of my favorite tips came from @khhegre who suggested the creation of small twitter lists consisting of category driven favorites. She’s used this as a creative way to overcome the challenges that go with the forced feed sampling approach which happens as you break 200 follows. The creation of lists still allows you to sample general tweets, while making sure you’re able to filter it category or emphasis when the mood strikes.

We also discussed the ways in which twitter has changed how we follow and consume blog content. The general consensus was that while many of us previously had favorite blogs/blog feeds which we followed, that our general approach had changed. Now the emphasis was on people, individual articles and information feeds, over the blog feed itself. Our new approach has evolved into sampling what looks interesting from our twitter feed which if reflective of general twitter users (Which I believe it is) shows a fundamental shift in how bloggers need to position themselves, distribute their posts, and share with the community. It looks like you’ll need to be even more social and pro-active in the future if you want to put your content in front of people.

We also discussed a few other basics, things like how we choose who to follow, the impact and importance of your following/follower ratio, and the power of twitter as a tool to build new relationships and friendships. Especially for travelers! I found @SmithTempe/@VisitTempe’s insights into how Tempe has been pushing into Social Media and really re-defining their relationship with the travel community to be really informative and exciting.

LinkedIn, TBEX, Tripitini – As a community focused event, the question of communities came up. We talked about three of the largest concentrations of general travel discussion. LinkedIn was a new one for me, but apparently as a very vibrant travel discussion community. We discussed Travel Blog Exchange in some depth including a break down on the recent TBEX conference which @khegre had been able to attend as well as Tripitini a more recent community on the scene that is very similar to Tripitini and has an active travel community.

Facebook – We spent some time brainstorming on the way we use and interact with Facebook as well as its potential for improving social interaction, building/maintaining travel contacts/friendships and as a traffic/community building tool. The consensus? Facebook has done amazing things for empowering travelers and giving an easy way to meet and stay in contact with friends made on the road. We also looked at how Facebook is increasingly becoming one of the primary traffic drivers for independent bloggers and community sites. Probably in no-small part due to the same shift we’re seeing in Twitter as people move from individual blog loyalty to a focus on people’s recommendations and individual links.

Hostels and Couchsurfing – We had a fun chat with a few comical adventure stories about what hostels are, who they’re right for, their positives and some of their drawbacks. We also discussed Couchsurfing (with a quick introduction to what it is) and different tools for reaching out to travelers as they visit Phoenix/Arizona.

Lots more beyond that, but those are the highlights that jump to mind! Hopefully they serve as good food for thought for those who were not able to join us. If they’ve sparked a thought or question, don’t hesitate to keep the conversation going in a comment here on this post.

Thank you again to everyone who came out. I hope to get a 3rd Arizona Travel Tweetup organized for sometime in late September or early October. I look forward to continuing to build the community and helping put real faces and names to twitter/blogs/websites.

Howdy friends, it has gradually come to my attention that Arizona is an often overlooked powerhouse for independent, travel minded bloggers and travel based social media personalities. Many of us cross paths online via twitter, blogs or social forums on a regular basis – but seldom put 2 and 2 together/meet face to face.

For a group that highly values social interact, meeting new friends and stories of adventure, this just doesn’t strike me as acceptable. The solution? An Arizona Travel Blogger meet up. I’m not talking about anything fancy – just coffee or a beer, a few hours of conversation and a chance to share wisdom while putting names with faces, blogs and twitter handles.

Date: Saturday, March 6th at 11:30AM.

Location: Xtreme Bean which is located on the South West Corner of McClintock and Southern in Tempe, near the US 60/101. Yelp profile here.

Coordination: Use twitter hash tag #aztw. My phone number is 480.313.2441 if you want to confirm anything or are having issues finding the coffee shop.

Spread the Word: So, here’s the challenge. Let’s make sure we don’t miss anyone. Are you aware of travel tweeps, bloggers or industry personalities that might like to join? Make sure to either send them to this post, or get me their e-mail and I’ll reach out to them.

Alex Berger

In 2007 I set out on a three month solo trip through Europe. I've been authoring VirtualWayfarer ever since with a focus on sharing stories, musings, and advice through a visually and narrative rich format.

I'm a former M&A professional from Arizona who re-located to Copenhagen, Denmark five years ago. I currently work as a Product Marketing Manager in the ad tech industry while simultaneously authoring this blog.

All opinions expressed on this site are mine alone and do not represent my employer.